


His Continents of Light

by Gileonnen



Series: The Hand That Wields the Sword [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Delicious Curry, Interplanetary Art Smuggling, M/M, Masturbation, Mob Bosses and Hired Guns, Morally Dubious Choices, Oral Sex, Ownership Kink, Size Kink, The Lure of the Abyss, The Sword and the Hand That Wields It, Throne Sex, Transaction Kink, Xenophilia, mild bloodplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 13:22:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18700456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: In the aftermath of the hunt for Uldren Sov, Kalith finds himself searching for purpose--or if not a purpose of his own, then a hand to wield him like a blade.The Spider has many uses for a willing blade.





	His Continents of Light

After, Kalith sits with Pelagia on the scintillating shoreline of the Dreaming City and watches the waves come in. There's a place past the jutting stones where the water grows dark, where the waves hitch and fold before they come rolling in as foam at Kalith's feet. There, the shelf of the land drops away, not to the bottom of an ocean but instead into some fathomless well. A thick mist hangs over the water like a diaphanous curtain, shifting out of time with the wind.

It's like a lesson: _Stray too far from shore, and you may not come back._

It isn't that Kalith feels guilty, exactly. Uldren Sov earned his end, and Kalith has brought so many to their ends unearned. It doesn't make things different, that he knew Uldren's name.

He'd expected it to feel better.

Pelagia turns from the water first. The points of her shell shift and flex--it means she's looking for words. "You and Petra did the right thing."

"I know. I know." Kalith draws his knees up on the rock and wraps his arms around them. The cold wind off the water cuts through his robes, for all the Dreaming City is warm as a late-spring day. He licks his lips, then says in a rush, "I miss having a list. The hunt kept me focused, and now--now I'm at the end of my list. But nothing's changed, except that there's nothing left for me to do."

"If you need work, the Vanguard probably have something," Pelagia says gently. "But maybe you should take some time to grieve? The work will still be there when you're ready."

For a moment, Kalith lets himself consider it. Going back to the places where he and Cayde-6 had met, made trouble, made history. There are a dozen bars scattered across the system with their memories carved in walls and countertops, gouges and bloodstains and bullet scars.

"No," Kalith says at last. "The work's there whether or not I'm ready. So I may as well get to work."

Pelagia gives an electrical hiss of annoyance. "You can't bury your feelings in work, you know. They're still there, too--whether or not you're ready. And one of these days, you're going to have to face them."

"One of these days," he agrees. The waves lick at the crystalline sands. "But not yet."

* * *

"Greetings, my elegant friend," the Spider says. There's a warmth to his tone that Kalith has never heard before--a certain expansiveness that in the right light might even pass for goodwill. His helmeted face gives nothing away, but his limbs are loose and easy as he leans back on his throne. "They say the Prince and his Barons are no longer our problem. Hmph! Good riddance. Tell me, which of you pulled the trigger? Was it you, or--"

"I didn't come here to chat." Kalith lifts his chin, meeting the Spider's eyes. "A number of high-profile prisoners escaped the Prison of Elders along with Uldren. The Vanguard believe that you might have intelligence on their whereabouts."

The Spider chuckles, two hands clasped over his stomach. "Straight to business, I see," he murmurs. "What you're asking is difficult. These prisoners have--hmm--useful friends. _Valuable_ friends. There are opportunities there. But I might be able to put out a few feelers for my good friends in the Vanguard. For the right price."

"Of course." Weeks of working for the Spider have taught Kalith that on the Tangled Shore, everything has its price. "What, then? Ether? Glimmer? Name your price. I'm prepared to pay."

 _Too eager. Already willing to give anything._ Kalith sees his mistake immediately--he's shown his hand, and the Spider would be blind not to recognize the advantage that Kalith's given him. He's grateful for the tinted lenses in his helmet, the bulk of his armor; they hide the color rising from his chest to his cheeks.

The throne creaks and sways as the Spider shifts his weight. He leans against one of the cables with his hips canted up, one leg crossed over the other beneath the spider-stamped fabric of his robe. "Let's make a game of it," he says. His voice is a low, intimate rumble. It resonates in the hollow of Kalith's chest, big and deep and somehow everywhere at once.

Kalith swallows. If he didn't know better, he'd swear the Spider was trying to seduce him. "If that's what it takes. What's the game?"

The Spider's fingertips curl around the cable. "Bring me something ... interesting. And then we'll negotiate."

Kalith bows. "I'll be back soon."

 _Something interesting,_ he thinks as he climbs the steps out of the safehouse. His footfalls ring hollow in the metal halls. _What the fuck does that mean?_

* * *

For the next week, Kalith scours the system for anything that might pique the Spider's interest. He harvests solar panels from broken arrays, Vex transmitters that pulse gently with red light even after he disconnects them; he combs through the wreckage of the Exodus Black for the ephemera of the Golden Age. Knee-deep in the riotous greenery of the New Pacific Arcology, he collects children's toys and soap operas stored on ancient data crystals.

There was never a time when these were treasures. At best, they were someone's. On a rough day--when he's been awake for thirty-odd hours and he's out of ammunition, when he's too deep beneath the methane oceans for transmat and there's nothing to do but scrub Hive shit off of his boots while Pelagia scans for hostiles--he finds himself longing for that.

He wishes he were someone's. A little posable soldier: set him up and knock him down.

By the time he returns to the Tangled Shore, he's craving its jagged rocks and shantytowns. After the grand, soaring rot of Titan, the tangled overgrowth creeping through the circuitry of Nessus, there's something comforting about the atmosphere of Thieves' Landing. Still standing on the transmat pad, Kalith takes off his helmet and inhales the processed air. He tastes dust, ether, the tang of rust and raw stone.

A bolt of blue light knocks chips out of the rock beside his head. His bow's off his back before he can think about it, and he's sighting through the scope and loosing an arrow at the Vandal who'd fired on him.

Silver ether rises from the Vandal in a plume. Briefly, Kalith glimpses the Vandal's face ghosting through vapor, and then the ether dissipates into the air.

His stomach twists. He bends down to pick up his helmet again, then dusts it off with a forced grin and slides it back into place. _Welcome to the Shore,_ he thinks to himself.

Today, there are sentinel servitors at the entryway to the Spider's safehouse. Their great gleaming purple eyes turn to watch him as he approaches, and the guards tense with their hands on their spears. Electricity crackles over the blades. "I'm a friend of the Spider's," Kalith says in English; when they don't move, he tries it again in halting Eliksni. "I've come to trade."

The guards lean their heads together and confer in undertones. He catches only about half of what they say--something about _transaction_ and _long-awaited_ and _Spider's pet Guardian._

It should be insulting. It should feel like a wound to his dignity, and he should endure it like a wound. But Kalith is so, so tired, and being a pet sounds restful. It sounds right.

Eventually, the guards move half a step apart and shift their grips on their spears. It's not much, but he'll take it. His robe brushes against the spines on their armor as he slips between them.

Almost immediately, Kalith hears an outraged roar echoing up the stairs. His hand is already on his bow before he recognizes the Spider's voice.

"Unacceptable! Forgeries and fakes--thinks she can swindle the Spider. I want her operation _shut down_ , do you hear me?"

The Spider is standing amid a sea of shipping crates, all of them stamped with what looks like Cabal script. His eyes are bright and sharp and livid with ire. He looms over his associates, a hulking figure at least nine feet tall--taller than most Captains Kalith's fought, approaching the height of some Kells. The golden beads dangling from his armor click and sway with every furious gesture.

For a moment, Kalith can't quite process what he's seeing. He's never seen the Spider away from his throne before; that framework has become a part of the Spider in his mind's eye, like the high crown of his helmet or the white stamp of his symbol. Kalith has never even wondered what it would be like, not to see him slouched at the center of a web of cable and copper and steel. Instead, the lines of his armor guide Kalith's eye down, from his broad chest to the swell of his gut--from shoulders to secondary shoulders, and from there to elegant wrists.

It's a good look.

Kalith clears his throat. "Trouble with one of your suppliers?" he asks.

The Spider turns, and his secondary arms fall to his sides as his primaries spread in welcome. "Ah, my Guardian returns. Tell me, what have you brought for my collection?"

Kalith notices how the Spider's associates shuffle back as his tone shifts from wrathful to mellifluous. That old Warlock urge to pry is almost overwhelming. _Not my business,_ he tells himself. "Why don't I show you," he says instead.

The Spider clears off a crate scored with bullet scars, and Kalith unloads his salvage on top of it. From the way the Spider's fingers twitch, Kalith can see he's impatient, but he makes himself lay out every item neatly. Toy soldiers, data solids, shimmering panels to capture the distant sunlight. They catch the dim, orange-yellow light and gleam in rows of crystallized flame.

The Spider braces one hand on the corner of the crate and leans in. His breath hisses faintly through the filter on his helmet; Kalith catches the sharp, silvery scent of ether with each exhalation. This close, in the chill of the antechamber, the Spider is a furnace. Kalith can't help bending toward that warmth, like a heliotrope tracking the sun.

Two long, clawed fingers card through the detritus of the Golden Age. "Trash," the Spider mutters as he flicks the solar panels aside. Next the soap operas go skittering across the floor to clink against a crate. "Nothing but trash; it's a buyer's market for ancient dramas--hmm."

He lifts a toy soldier from the pile and holds it up to the light. The glow from his eyes picks out the edges in electric blue. "Now, _this_ is something. Pewter with lead. Hasn't been used for toys since before the Golden Age. I know a collector who would be very interested in seeing this."

"Not keeping it for your own collection?" Kalith asks.

The Spider chuckles as his hand closes on the toy. "I deal in a higher class of antiquities. A shame we don't have time for me to introduce you to my other treasures."

An uneasy thrill of intimacy sings up Kalith's spine. "Other treasures?" he asks. The Spider treats everything that floats into his orbit as his property--he knows that--but this feels different in a way that Kalith can't put into words. It's one thing to be called the Spider's pet by a couple of guards who don't think much of him; it's another thing entirely to be called a treasure. _My treasure._

"We've played your game," Pelagia cuts in, and just like that, Kalith comes back to himself in the grubby storage room. She shimmers into being just above Kalith's shoulder, the points of her shell spinning and whirring as though she's a bristling cat. "We brought you what you asked for. Do you have information on those escaped prisoners or not?"

The Spider throws his head back and laughs. "Such an impatient little Ghost. You seem to think you're setting the terms for this transaction. Let me reeducate you."

"She's right," Kalith answers. He steps back, folding his arms and raising his chin. The Spider tilts his head as though that little gesture of defiance amuses him. "We've abided by your terms. If you're dissatisfied with what we've brought, tell us, and I'll find something else to pique your interest. But we need actionable intelligence, and unfortunately, we may not have time to play games."

"Unfortunate, indeed." The Spider extends a hand, and one of his associates sets a datapad in it. "You've earned a location. And let's make this interesting: if you bring me a trophy, there may be a reward in it for you. If you fail, of course--"

"This conversation never happened."

"Good." Dim yellow schematics skim across the datapad as the Spider's clever claws manipulate the surface. "There's a certain Captain with ties to the Silent Fang who's gone to ground in an old Cabal installation in the European Dead Zone. Gifted shield technician. Engineers shanks for fun. My friends in the Reef would be very, heh, _grateful_ to get that one back behind bars ..."

* * *

After that, Kalith goes where he's sent. He tracks the Silent Fang to a Cabal skydock and blows through every shield and shank, then pockets a hidden cache of dusklight crystals while he waits for Pelagia to lock onto his transmat beacon.

Kalith returns to the Spider with his quarry's helmet for a trophy, presenting it on bended knee at the foot of that arachnoid throne. When he feels the helmet leave his hands, he looks up, and he has the quiet satisfaction of seeing the Spider lift it like Hamlet with the skull of Yorick. There's recognition in his eyes, not just of the helmet's owner but of the slow, steady sweep of mortality. _I knew him, Kalith,_ that look seems to say.

"Hmph," the Spider says aloud. "Good riddance."

The Spider pays in glimmer and guns, amber-gold enhancement cores crackling with possibility--but more than that, he pays in information. For every trophy, there is another quarry waiting, another name for Kalith's list. He hunts Vex Minds through the deep coppery mazes of Nessus; he tracks the Downpour Captain to a dripping cavern in the EDZ, where constellations of cave worms illuminate the stalactites above. In a filth-crusted cargo bay swarming with Hive, he puts an arrow through one of the great ogre Golmuut's luminous eyes.

The Spider's intelligence is always good. When Kalith returns to the Tangled Shore with Ghost fragments and alkane for trade, the Spider is always waiting with praise and new purpose.

"Shouldn't you take a break?" Pelagia asks as they step out of the shaded entryway of Pariah's Refuge and into the searing sunlight of Mercury. Ahead looms the chasm that separates the Lighthouse from the rest of the world. "You've pretty much cleared up everyone on the Vanguard's most wanted list. I don't think even Zavala would blame you if you wanted to take some leave. We could go back to the City and maybe invite Holliday to that nice curry place by the Pavilion of Roses--or you could catch up with Hawthorne and Devrim; I bet they have some new stories--"

"Why do you keep doing this?" Kalith asks softly. "Trying to get me to just ... drop everything and pretend things can go back to normal?"

Pelagia pulls in the points of her shell. "Because I'm worried you're going to break something I can't fix," she answers. "You're a Guardian. You're just immortal--not invincible. And if there's something I can't help with, then maybe someone else can. You lost Cayde, and I _know_ that's a lot. I know. But you haven't lost everything. We have so much left."

Kalith shades his eyes and peers across the chasm. On the far side, shimmering radiolaria cascades endlessly into the abyss. The world on the far side is a stark, hard-edged wasteland of concrete white and intricate copper-gold circuitry. _This was once a garden world,_ he thinks, and it suddenly strikes him as sad that he'll never see more than a simulation of those thick-boled trees and those golden fields dotted with flowers. Mercury is an engine now, and everything without a purpose has been scraped from its surface.

He tastes salt. He's crying; it's fogging up his helmet, and he can't wipe his eyes clear. It's stupid to be crying about the flowers of Mercury, of all things, but now that he's started he can't make himself stop. So he just sits down at the edge of the long fall and watches the radiolaria pouring down in long streams, until his visor is fogged up and his throat is raw from staying quiet.

Pelagia comes to rest in his hands, pulsing softly. She doesn't say anything. He's grateful for that.

Eventually, Kalith picks himself up. He swallows, hard; it feels like trying to swallow a stone. "Let's go back to the City," he tells Pelagia, when he trusts his voice to be steady. "I want to see if that curry place is still there."

"It is," she answers. "I queried the network. It has an average of four point eight nine stars out of five since the reopening."

Kalith can't help smiling. "Can't argue with four point eight nine."

"The oh point one one would disagree."

"They're statistically irrelevant."

Then the icy rush of transmat takes him and unmakes him.

* * *

When Kalith arrives on the Wall, he finds that his old friend Lee Abara is back from a long patrol on Nessus. They were on a fireteam together once a while back, clearing out Fallen near the Cosmodrome, and they try to get coffee whenever they're in the City at the same time because they're both shit at keeping in touch. "How do you feel about curry?" Kalith asks over the comms.

"Agnostic," Lee answers. "You buying?"

"Sure. I've recently come into a fair bit of money, and I have no idea how to spend it all."

"Well, if that doesn't sound suspicious, I don't know what does. Sure, let's get curry. Then maybe you can buy me a couple of weapon mods while you tell me all about your new life of crime."

Kalith can't really contest that, so he doesn't try.

The Last City is still pockmarked with craters, but now there are flowers on every street: hanging baskets of nasturtiums in the windows, jasmine spilling over trellises, potted freesias on the counter of the curry place near the Pavilion of Roses. When Kalith arrives, he finds Lee already there with his back to a corner, eyeing a geranium in a window box.

"There's so much green here," he says instead of _Hello._ He's near two meters of lean muscle, gone a little pale from the sun-starved valleys of Nessus, and even in his civilian clothes he looks like he's about to go back on patrol. His black hair hangs lank and severe to his chin. "I got used to red, back on Nessus. Tea's here if you want it."

Kalith slides into the seat across from him. It puts his back to the room, and that makes his skin prickle--but this is the Last City, not the Empty Tank. He doesn't have to watch his back here. "On the Tangled Shore, the greenest places are underground. Old mines, natural caverns. Took me a while to get used to dropping into a cave and finding hanging plants dripping from every ledge."

"Is that where you made your fortune, then. Lot of things passing through the Tangled Shore. Contraband, mostly." Lee's expression stays mild, and there's no condemnation in his voice. He takes the teapot and pours out a steaming cup of milky tea for Kalith. When it's full almost to the brim, he nudges it across the table.

Kalith picks up the cup and drinks. "There's a Vanguard contact there with an extensive network. I do a little enforcement work for him. In return, he's been helping us track down a few escaped criminals from the Prison of Elders. Sometimes he rewards me for their capture."

Lee leans back until his chair creaks. He drums his fingers on the table, the way he always does when he's thinking. "Rewards you for doing the thing you wanted to do in the first place. Huh. Not how my contacts usually handle it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just seems like he has an angle."

 _My elegant friend._ Kalith barely restrains a shiver. "Knowing him, he has several angles."

"You know best. Just seems strange, is all."

Kalith puts his cup down. "Anyway. I'm not here to talk about the Spider."

A little grin ghosts across Lee's face. "Seems like you might be. What's Pelagia think of this contact of yours?"

"She hasn’t put a hit on him yet, but I have to emphasize the 'yet.'"

"Always was a Ghost with good sense." Lee takes a menu from the holder by the wall and opens it in front of Kalith. "All that running around on the Shore's made you forget how restaurants work, looks like. You figure out what you want, then you ask somebody for it. So pick a curry. Tell me about things."

Over a hot red curry with basil and fish and big flakes of melting-soft squash, Kalith tells the whole story--the Prison of Elders, Cayde, the hunt for Uldren, the Shore and the Reef. Lee leans back in his corner and drinks his tea, occasionally taking a bite of his tofu or snatching a piece of fish from Kalith's plate. He listens, and he nods in the right places.

Eventually, Kalith's words run out, and then they sit in silence for a while and finish their meals. Lee doesn't say anything until their spoons are scraping up the last of the curry sauce at the bottom of their bowls. Finally, when there's only the bill to pay, Lee asks, "So what do you think of all this? You like how this is going?"

 _I do,_ Kalith thinks, and it's a revelation. He likes being off the regular Vanguard strike rotations; he likes picking his targets and choosing how he's going to take them down. And he likes working with the Spider. There's something comforting about being given his marching orders and knowing that he can execute them well--then coming back to the Spider's den to be praised and rewarded.

He would be whatever the Spider asked him to be: a righteous blade, a treasured ornament, an eager body crying out for a touch. If he could, he would kneel at the foot of that throne and not rise until he was bidden.

He isn't sure how long he's been thinking of himself as the Spider's pet Guardian. Since before he heard someone put it into words, probably. He recognized himself when he heard it, as though he'd heard his name from across a crowded room.

"Yeah," Kalith says eventually. He looks down at his hands and smiles helplessly. "It's probably the worst choice I've ever made, but I do like it. I want to go back to it. I just ... want to go back because it makes me happy, not because it's the only thing I can think to do."

"Then good for you." Lee heaves himself up from his chair. "You want to do something crazy, commit to it."

Kalith grins. "Just what I'd expect to hear from a Hunter."

"You want to hear something different, ask a Titan out for curry." Lee offers a hand to help Kalith up. "So, you gonna buy me a new Suros gun, or do I have to think of some other way to spend your money?"

"It was mods a few hours ago," Kalith laughs.

"A few hours ago, I didn't know you had a sugar daddy in the Eliksni mob. Come on, I've had my eye on the Regime for months."

* * *

Kalith rents a room high in one of the towers that survived the Red War, where he can watch the City lights reflecting from the Traveler's shattered shell. There are new scars in that gleaming surface, new cracks through which he can see a kind of iridescence that's Light as much as light. It hurts to see them. He slides open the window and rests his arms on the sill, breathing in the cool night air.

For a long time, he just stands at the open window and watches as fragments of the Traveler slowly drift and circle, as though watching will somehow make them come back together into a whole. But the shards glide on in their orbits, and the stars slowly wheel overhead.

"I'm never sure why you chose me," he says under his breath. "I'm so afraid of fucking up your gift. If there's something you want me to do--if there's some grand design that you have for us--I'm yours. I'll always be yours. If you asked me to choose, I'd choose you. But I need to know if that's the choice I'm making."

No answer comes. The Traveler looms between him and the horizon, radiating soft white light from every fissure, inscrutable mechanisms lustrous and pulsing. Eventually, Kalith closes the window and draws the blinds closed.

Maybe it will quiet his mind to get clean. In the dim light of a lamp with a gold filigree shade, Kalith undresses for the night. He sets the shower running and takes down his hair, then steps under the hot, welcome spray and just lets the water sluice over his body until his skin stings all over.

He cups his hands and brings the hot water up to splash his face, then drags his fingers down his cheeks. _Relax_ , he tells himself, as though it's ever helped to tell himself to relax.

Kalith's hand falls to his throat. It feels good there--just a suggestion of pressure, not strangling but _holding_. He spreads his fingers until his throat is girdled between thumb and forefinger, until every shallow breath and every beat of his pulse echoes through his hand.

He wishes it were a collar, and the Spider's hand on his leash.

His free hand slides down his ribs, coming to rest at the hollow of his hip. The hot water leaves him raw and sensitive, and even the faintest touch takes him to the very edge of pain. He closes his eyes and digs his fingernails into his skin until welts rise beneath them. He's already so hard that his whole body aches.

 _What does my Guardian need?_ The voice feels more intimate than a memory, more real than a fantasy; Kalith can almost feel the Spider's solid warmth at his back as four clever hands skate over his chest. He can almost feel claws carving thin, bright lines down his ribs. (His hand comes up to drag the sharp point of a nail over his nipple.)

 _More,_ he thinks as he rakes his nails down; there's a swift, sharp scent of blood, and then the hot water carries it away. _I'm yours. I've always been yours. Please, use me._

The heel of his hand grazes his cock, and he grinds his palm over it--slow, slow, as though his orgasm is no object. As though the privilege of being touched is pleasure enough.

Maybe the Spider would touch him like this. Maybe he would luxuriate in the softness of Kalith's skin, his soft staccato cries, the way his whole body bows up into the least brush of knuckles; maybe he would handle Kalith like a precious thing, until Kalith is pleading to be fucked.

Maybe he would jerk Kalith off, brusque and businesslike, then smirk and demand repayment for the favor.

Kalith's back hits the wall of the shower, and the sudden coolness of the tile makes him shudder. He brings up the hand on his throat to force back his jaw. _Please, let me please you._

He doesn't know how to please an Eliksni lover, but even so, he sinks to his knees and tries to imagine it.

By the time he lets himself come, the water has gone cold, and his skin is crossed with thin red gashes.

* * *

The doors slide open with a mechanical groan and admit Kalith to the Spider's audience chamber, as they have a hundred times before.

The Spider is waiting. He sprawls there, massive and armored and untouchable on his throne, his heavy body spilling over the edges of his seat. One hand plays with a Ghost shell, clicking it slowly into new configurations; two others are braced on the cables supporting his throne.

Kalith takes a deep breath. _You can turn around,_ he thinks. _You can trade glimmer and alkane and pretend this is any other visit._

He doesn't want to pretend. He doesn't want to turn around. Before he can second-guess himself further, he steps through the entryway and falls to one knee on the rough green rugs.

The Spider cants his head to the side. "An unexpected guest. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"May I speak with you alone?" Kalith asks.

The Spider's bodyguards tense. Kalith knows them; he's hunted Scorn with them in Quitter's Well, slicing through brittle exoskeletons and rot-slick flesh while they laid down covering fire. They've put their lives in his hands. But it's a different thing to offer up the Spider's life, knowing what they know about the sun-hot wrath of his blade.

Eventually, the Spider nods. "You've intrigued me," he says. With an elegant gesture of dismissal, he tells his bodyguards, "Leave us." They give a half-bow of acknowledgment and pad out through a side door, past a jumble of boxes and badly-rolled rugs.

And then they're alone.

Kalith licks his lips. He's tried to have this conversation a thousand times in his head, and every iteration sounded worse than the last. There's no way to say _I want you to own me_ and then be able to take it back. There's no way to say it that lets them both pretend it was never asked.

The Spider leans forward. His sharp eyes meet Kalith's, and it's impossible to look away. "If you want something, speak up."

"I want you," says Kalith, low. He braces himself for laughter, bluster, rage--he could handle those. But the Spider only holds his gaze with a keen, listening look, and he's not sure he can handle that at all.

"If there's a service you want to request, let's talk terms. Are you here for information? Money? What does my Guardian need?"

Kalith's heart pounds. He feels it in his clenched hands, his ears, his throat. It feels like the deep throb of an engine. "I want _you._ I don't know if that's even something you'd do--taking lovers, or taking human lovers--and I understand if you aren't interested. But I am. Interested."

At this, the Spider does laugh, a deep, resonant chuckle that rings from the rusting walls of his makeshift palace. "You know that my relationships are strictly business. But I am open to renegotiating, if the price is right. What are you offering?"

"Myself," Kalith answers. "As your Guardian. Your property, to use as you will."

"My property," the Spider says musingly. He seems to turn the idea over in his head like a Ghost shell, seeing how it catches the light. "If I need you to cut down my enemies, or retrieve my goods?"

"I would. I already do."

"Sharing intelligence on competing operations on my Shore, making introductions with other interested parties--"

"Yes. You know I would."

The Spider inhales; a thread of ether rises from his mouth on the exhalation. "What if I asked you to use that clever mouth on me?"

That question goes right to Kalith's cock. He swallows. "Are you asking?"

Freeing one hand from the taut cables, the Spider crooks a finger. "Come here. Let me see you."

Kalith rises as though the Spider's claw is a hook beneath his ribs. He approaches the foot of the throne, removing his helmet and letting it fall to the ground.

The Spider reaches out to tilt Kalith's chin up. Those dexterous fingers curl over his cheek; the pad of his thumb grazes his lips. His bare skin is hot and supple against Kalith's own. When he leans down to bring their faces close, Kalith's eyes slide closed unbidden.

"I have a task for you," the Spider whispers against his ear. "My Guardian. There's a troublesome smuggler who has something of mine, and my associates have failed to breach her defenses. But with a Guardian of my own ..."

It feels good to hear himself claimed. To be given a purpose. Kalith leans up into the touch, turning his face into the Spider's narrow palm, and feels the Spider's hand close around him. "I'm yours. Tell me where to find her."

"Shut her operation down," says the Spider. "And when it's finished, come back to me for your reward."

* * *

The Tangled Shore is receding behind them, and Pelagia is still giving Kalith a piece of her mind. "I don't understand! Why does it have to be him? If you have to play these fealty games with someone, there are probably dozens of Guardians who would at least consider it. Lord Saladin, maybe, or Commander Zavala--"

"I am not fucking Zavala." No matter how much it appeals to him to be beholden to a Titan's strength. "I have to report to him. It would be fraternization, or something."

"This thing with the Spider _is_ just a game, isn't it?" Pelagia asks. The sections of her shell strain open, widening the aperture around her central sensor. "I don't remember hearing you tell him that this was a game."

Kalith shrugs. "I don't know if it is. I don't know if he can put aside being the Spider long enough to treat this as a game--there are consequences for him that just aren't there for me."

"There are consequences for us, too," says Pelagia. Her voice is urgent, earnest. "Not just for you and me. For the Shore, the Reef--even the Vanguard. The Spider's network holds us together. If we give up our leverage, it's not a network. It's just a net."

"Or a web?" Kalith asks wryly. "The image had occurred to me."

"You're trying to distract me with precision. It's not going to work this time." Pelagia gazes out into the shifting, radiant light beyond the viewport. Preparing herself to say something difficult, Kalith thinks; fortifying herself with a long inhalation of spectrometry data, the way he'd take a steadying breath. "It worries me," she says eventually. "Sooner or later, he's going to ask us to do something that we can't do. What are we going to do then?"

It's a thought that Kalith has been trying not to think. Right now, the Vanguard's interests and the Spider's align. But the system is unstable; the Traveler is awake, the Awoken of the Reef are chafing for new leadership, the Fallen are rising on every habitable world. The Red Legion is shattered, but the Cabal are still a power to be reckoned with. The Scorn spread their influence in shantytowns and prison cells, in tanks of corrupted ether and the promise of immortality--and wherever they go, they push those warring forces into uneasy truces. Foolish not to be ready for the day when their alliances shift past recovering.

So much easier to be someone's sword.

"I don't know," Kalith answers. It's barely a whisper; if Pelagia didn't know his subvocals so well, even her keen sensors might not hear. "When the time comes, though, if there's a choice to make--I hope that my choice will be clear."

Pelagia nudges his shoulder with one of her points. "Remember, you won't have to make it alone. And at least this one's easy! A smuggler with a priceless treasure--that's practically our job."

Kalith reaches up to curl his fingers against Pelagia's shell. "I know they won't all be easy. But I also know I'm not alone."

"I trust you," she says. "Please don't screw this up."

* * *

The target is a Psion named Kismik, and she's taken over an old Clovis Bray outpost carved into the ellipsoidal centaur Haumea. The Traveler's touch lies lightly on this world; the atmosphere is barely breathable, the gravity uneven from pole to equator. Huge ferns shade every ruined entryway, and their roots knot over every plinth and fountain.

Kismik's crew are prepared for trouble, but they're organized like they're expecting a force of dozens. They've stationed themselves at chokepoints, on catwalks above the facility's grounds; they've positioned snipers on the dizzying spire that rises up from the overgrown quadrangle. They aren't ready for a Guardian armed with the hot solar fury of the Light.

He cuts down the smugglers like so many weeds.

In the wreckage of Kismik's lair, Kalith finds a storeroom full of contraband lifted from the Cabal shipping lanes. Interesting, and the Spider will certainly want them, but not what he's here for. He places a transmat beacon for Pelagia, then steps deeper into the shadows of the outpost.

Lamps flicker on at his passage--just dim, guttering panels that reveal slick growths like clubmoss. He glides down stairwells on a stream of Light, landing on thick, spongy pads of lichen.

He finds what he's seeking behind a heavy frosted-glass door. A name is carved into the surface in precise capitals: _Adhira Hussaini, CEO and Chief Investigator._ The door isn't locked, so he pushes it in.

Kismik has burrowed deep into this place. Kalith can see the ghosts of desk and chair legs amid the moss, the hard angles in the overgrowth where artwork and wall decor have been removed. Nestled in one corner of the room is a bed suspended from a ceiling beam; chests line the walls, marked with words in a language that's neither human nor Cabal.

But one ancient painting remains, vast and bright, safely tucked into a climate-controlled frame. This is Kismik's trophy, her treasure, her greatest triumph over the Spider; this is the thing for which he asked Kalith to destroy her.

Kalith traces his fingertips over the corner of the glass, picking out the bronze plaque that names it. "There are hundreds like it," says Pelagia over the comms. "It's part of a series. They're all--"

"This is the one he wants," Kalith answers.

_Claude Monet. Water Lilies._

* * *

The Spider splays his hand over the glass. His claws ring as he traces whorls of paint, suggestions of ripples or the delicate shell of a flower. "Well done," he murmurs at last. "Avrok, find me someone to authenticate this. I've spent good money tracking this piece down. I don't want to waste my time on another fake. Meanwhile, see that it stays secure."

Avrok bows, then goes with the Spider's other bodyguard to walk the painting out through that crowded side door.

Kalith watches them go, wondering how much the Spider's told them about his offer. _Enough that they know not to be here,_ he thinks.

"So." The Spider folds his hands over his stomach. "You've held up your end of the bargain."

"I don't consider it a bargain." Kalith tucks his hands at his back and squares his shoulders as though he's presenting himself for inspection. "This is ... this is a gift, freely given. I put myself in your hands; you decide how you'd like to use me. And if you tell me to go, I'll go."

"No questions asked."

Kalith nods. He doesn't trust himself to speak.

The Spider reaches up and undoes his helmet. Kalith glimpses straps, catches, tubing still alight with the echo of ether--then the helmet falls away, and Kalith is looking for the first time upon the Spider's bare face.

The Spider's history is written there, in the harsh musculature of his jaw and the laugh lines under his eyes. The ridges of his brows are heavy and stern; his eyes are deep-set but bright with interest. A cruel face, perhaps, but not only cruel. His mandibles twitch in something like a human smile, and Kalith's knees go weak. "Like what you see?" the Spider asks.

"Very much," says Kalith. His voice is thick. "Would you let me kiss you?"

"Don't be shy." When the Spider opens his arms, Kalith swarms up into his lap. He kisses along that mobile mandible, then beneath the Spider's jaw, then in the dip between the muscles of his throat. He tastes something sharper than sweat, smells the warm lightning-laced musk of the Spider's skin, and he can't help moaning in pleasure. "So eager," laughs the Spider.

"It's more than I expected." With the tip of his finger, he traces the edge of an armored plate where it follows the line of the Spider's cheekbone. The skin beneath is warm, and surprisingly soft. The Spider's eyes are radiant; their light gleams on Kalith's dark skin. "And better than I'd imagined."

A claw sweeps up the nape of Kalith's neck, and he presses back into the touch. "What did you imagine?"

 _Don't be shy._ "Being torn apart," he whispers. "Cut up. Spread open. Forced to suck you off. Or having you inside me--even if it breaks me, I want you inside me. Being chained to your throne like a pet, for everyone to see."

"I'm particular with my possessions," the Spider says, and Kalith feels the rumble of every word in his chest. "I don't put my treasures on display."

His skin heats at being called a possession--a _treasure._ "I'd wear a bond with a spider stamped on it, if it would please you."

"You're wearing too much as it is. It would please me to have you naked." The Spider settles Kalith back on his knees and begins unfastening the hidden catches and zippers that hold his robes together. His other hands undo the straps and buckles on Kalith's gloves, then toss them to the ground. Kalith hears the faint shimmering hiss of transmat as they fade away.

Hesitating, Kalith reaches out to lay his hand on the Spider's armor. "May I?" he asks, and the Spider huffs his assent.

They move together, shifting up to ease off Kalith's trousers, loosening straps, undoing laces. The Spider's hands are deft and sure; every touch feels deliberate, too much and not nearly enough. When his claws graze Kalith's hips, he gasps and bucks up into those hands as though he's never been touched before.

At last, bared to his skin, Kalith looks up into the Spider's eyes and leans back. He knows how fragile he must look, all slim shoulders and narrow chest; he knows, as the Spider knows, that he is unbreakable. "Do you like what you see?" he asks in quiet echo.

The Spider's gaze rakes him over, taking in weakness and strength, settling at last on Kalith's heavy, dark cock. No one has ever looked at him that way, with that greedy, all-devouring lust, and it makes him hot with want. The Spider traces down Kalith's sternum with a knuckle and murmurs, "I do."

Kalith can't look away. His whole body is affixed by that touch, still and trembling, longing for and dreading the moment when the Spider's hand falls at last to his loins. "Please," he says. "Please, use me."

"Here." The Spider fits a hand over one of Kalith's and guides it to the gap between the plates low on his gut. This close, he feels the livid heat radiating from the valley between those plates of bone. He's seen the passionless diagrams in xenobiology archives; he knows what he's being offered.

Every heartbeat makes his whole body throb. His palm makes contact, then his fingertips find the barely-visible slit and sink in.

His fingers are enveloped in warmth and slickness, taut muscles clenching and releasing with every inhalation. _I could fuck him like this,_ he thinks for all of a moment--and then he grazes the massive head of the Spider's cock.

It would wreck him to take all of that inside him. Kalith knows that immediately, and yet his mouth waters at the idea all the same. "Please," he says, close against the Spider's throat. "I want to suck you off."

The Spider's eyes are half-closed with obvious pleasure; his breath comes short and rough. He tangles his fingers in Kalith's hair, urging him down. "Then get on your knees."

Kalith has never been so happy to obey. He slides free, onto the cold cement-and-metal floor, and sinks down to lick. It tastes strange, sharp and musky in a way that Kalith can't pretend is human--but he doesn't want to pretend. The Spider's hands are in his hair, on his shoulders, scratching bright searing lines down the back of his neck, and Kalith is right where he belongs at the foot of the Spider's throne.

The tip of the Spider's cock slides free, and Kalith parts his lips to kiss and suck. It's already more than he can fit in his mouth, but he stretches himself wide anyway, making up the difference with one hand--then another. By the time the Spider is fully erect, he wishes he had a third and a fourth hand to compass it.

He wants so desperately to be fucked. He wants there to be no part of the Spider's cock that he can't touch.

"More," the Spider growls. "Don't stop."

Kalith opens his mouth still wider, past comfort, until at last the head slides past his teeth. The hurt in his jaw blossoms from a dull ache to a sharp, bright pain. He can't swallow; he can barely breathe. He's harder than he's ever been in his life. A single touch would undo him.

All of the Spider's hands tense together. His claws dig in like knife-points; he makes a strangled sound.

When he comes, he takes Kalith with him.

* * *

After, Kalith takes his Sparrow out for a fast ride across the Jetsam of Saturn. He weaves through the wreckage of crashed Hive ships, past broken struts like pillars and sheets of jagged metal already wearing dull. Fire trails behind him in a blinding arc; bridges creak and strain at his passage. He swings through Soriks's Cut, dodging Cabal patrols as he streaks into the treacherous roads of the Cobble.

At the end of a rusting bridge, where cables lash a meteoroid into the shambles, Kalith skids to a stop. He dismounts and lets the Sparrow dissolve into data behind him.

A breath of Light, and he's gliding to the top of the meteoroid; another brings him to a cratered ledge. With one last leap, he stands atop the whole ramshackle maze.

The whole of the Tangled Shore stretches before him, bolted together with steel and girders, whirling through space in a constellation of trash and rust and plasma fire. It's ugly. He loves it so fiercely that his throat goes tight.

The air is thin here, outside of the places that the Spider's forebears have forced into habitability. Just beyond the bridge, the abyss beckons, its infinite blackness shrouded in a mist of cosmic dust. Put a foot wrong, and he might fall forever.

Kalith sits at the edge of this not-yet-familiar world, and he dreams of the work left to do.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Emily Dickinson's "[The Spider holds a Silver Ball](https://allpoetry.com/The-Spider-holds-a-Silver-Ball)." Feel free to give me a poke on [Tumblr](http://gileonnen.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/gileonnen)!


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